I mispell things!
I’ve seen this on several sources today (ht tony jones for my first sighting). I have no words for this. I don’t even know how to comment other than feeling a strong need to go puke and take a shower.
Tapestry has participated in Advent Conspiracy since our beginning. I just found this “teaser” video for this years AC and thought I would use it as a reminder to start planning now for how you can “turn your Christmas upside down.”
During Advent we will try to…
It is always an excellent plan.
thanks to perry polnaszek i am presently reading miroslav volf’s “exclusion and embrace.” in the book volf basically works through the question of how we can follow JESUS’s command to love our enemies. really how do you love someone who might have done amazing evil to and against you? to use the old CHRISTian cliché, how do we love the sinner and hate the sin? it has been very challenging for me in several areas.
loving the sinner while hating the sin involve me “embracing” that person. that “embrace” makes it difficult to “exclude” the person while still not approving of the sin. for example, i love my kids and there is nothing they could do that would change that fact. there are, however, actions they could do that i would find HIGHLY disagreeable. since i love them i wouldn’t view them by their sin. instead i view them as people who i love who have done something terrible. on the other hand, that “embrace” hasn’t happened with people i don’t know and so it is more difficult not merely view them from the view of “exclusion.” there are actions that are so evil that we morally must respond to with “exclusion” but that doesn’t mean we ignore the “embrace” of the individual who committed them.
i’ll share a none sin relate example. it is political season and so in our social media world this means i daily run into a large number of people expressing their political beliefs and some whose main goal seems to be just belittling other people’s political beliefs. there are people i love who disagree with me but i would never ignore them because i know them as loved ones rather than just people i disagree with politically. on the ohter hand, two nights ago i mistakenly got into a political debate with an anonymous person on twitter (it’s a long story that i won’t get into). the conversation was very frustrating because the guy was combative. i didn’t even really mean to get into a conversation with him. i responded to a former youth’s tweet and this guy jumped in and started criticizing me and tapestry even though he doesn’t know ether of us. he would say something and i would try to respond. i quickly reached a point where i was starting to really not like someone that i didn’t even know. that is when i thought of “exclusion and embrace” and i decided i should get to know him. i figured finding out his name would be a good start. it didn’t work out so well because he wasn’t interested in anything more than telling me how wrong i was. at that point the conversation ended because i realized i couldn’t debate a person whose name i didn’t even know. nothing good would come of the twitter conversation until we both new a little about each other.
still it was a good lesson for me.
in the midst of disagreement or worse i am going to try to respond to people with “embrace” even if i am rightly reacting to their actions or beliefs with “exclusion.”
the southern baptist convention is meeting this week. this means the largest protestant denomination in the u.s., which i am a part, is coming together to make decisions about how it does things. invariably there will be a great deal of news concerning the election of the first african-american SBC president. as well there should be since the SBC’s start was racially based. i personally am very glad we have come full circle.
yet, this is not what i want to post about.
nope, i want to post about mark 9:33-37 where JESUS talks about whoever wants to be the greatest. HE says whoever wants to be first must be the very last, the servant of all. such servanthood is the defining characteristic of the leadership JESUS wants in those who follow HIM. there are a lot of important people in the spotlight of the southern baptist convention’s annual meeting. i wonder how many of the people on the stage this week are usually putting themselves “very last.”
i have been around some pastors who were (and still are) amazing servants. bill pruitt, one of the pastors i worked with in baton rouge at parkview, is one such servant. i went with him to a louisiana baptist convention executive board meeting once and discovered that he had developed the habit of clearing all the lunch trays for everyone. frank morrow, the pastor i worked with in covington, texas, was the same way. they are many others i could mention who live a life of leadership by being the servant of everyone else. i hope i lead from being the last rather than always trying to be first.
as usual, i really like what coffee with JESUS has to say today.
sunday night during the message i used a list that mike yaconelli wrote in his wonderful study “the disciple experiment” concerning “clues” to knowing how JESUS would respond. i was asked to posted these so here they are:
there are lots of situations where we know pretty well how JESUS would respond, others where we don’t honestly know for sure how JESUS would respond, and finally many situations where i am sure i know how HE would respond but i’m quite possibly wrong. in my opinion, these clues are a great start of following CHRIST. the beauty of following a gracious GOD is that HE is quite forgiving when i am stupid.
yac was awesome and is still a huge influence on how i follow CHRIST and try to help others to follow CHRIST.
SIDE NOTE – here is a little bit of the wonderfulness that was yac. i so wish i had been able to know him as more than just an acquaintance. even so i really miss him.
i’m pretty sure that i have guest preached at this church before. i have definitely driven 45 minutes before to preach at a church that had 8 people at it and has had around 8 people for years. while i am most assuredly a small church guy that doesn’t mean that i believe churches should stay small by never adding anyone. in fact, i believe the exact opposite.
tapestry is small. most sunday nights there are 45-50 threads at washington elementary school. we also plan on staying small but emphasize growing. we are very intentional about staying small and growing at the same time.
we are doing this by knowing that as we grow we also plan on splitting to form new churches. it is a concept that i bring up often with the leadership team and the church. our magic number is 150ish in average attendance. tapestry stole this concept from the hutterites, an anabaptist community, and from my brief experience with a group of churches in philadelphia called the circle of hope . i am a big radical reformation guy so the hutterites are a particular draw for me. anyhow hutterite communities look to split when they hit 150ish. the insulated wear company gore-tex also practices this mindset. the idea is that people can only truly know and connect with 150ish people (no matter what facebook says) and therefore groups work best at around that number. the anthropologist robin dunbar talked about this in the principle that is commonly known as “dunbar’s number.”
so 150ish is our split number (btw, i love saying split with people who have been raised in church because it draws a very different image for them – they usually prefer the word divide but i really like saying split). that number leaves us plenty of room to grow right now. we started 3 years ago with an average of 8. we’ve slowly grown by focusing on people who weren’t connected with a local church. we will continue to grow by focusing on people who are not connected with a local church BUT the goal is not to stop when we get close to 150ish. nope. the goal is to grow while staying small (i guess you could say “growing small”). we’ll just split and form a new church that reaches a different group of people. we’ll be “sister” churches that still do many things together while also reaching people who might never connect with tapestry at washington. then the fun will really begin because we will hopefully do an even better job of “growing small” when there are two tapestries. i hope years from now there are dozens of us intentionally “growing small” churches in the area.
again the goal is to grow and stay small. not just stay small.
SIDE NOTE – the graphic comes from asbo JESUS. i love that blog.
i made it back home form DC for Q last night. i have about 40 pages of notes in my journal that i need to go through to fully debrief. my thoughts on what i learned and experienced this year will probably make it up on my blog eventually. for now i’ll just post some quick final thoughts concerning my three days in washington.
i have to confess that i have never really understood it when i have heard ministers complain about people who only come to church on CHRISTmas and easter. thankfully i haven’t heard many ministers complain about this phenomenon but i have unfortunately heard a very few. i am honored no matter when someone comes to tapestry to declare the worth of GOD. it doesn’t matter how often. some people come more often than others. others can’t come as often. that is just part of life.
the irony for me personally is that while CHRISTmas and easter are usually large attendance days for most other churches, they are typically days where tapestry has lower attendance. this is because of the average age of the people who are a part of tapestry. we are a young church and this means that the majority of “threads” are usually at the age where they need to go visit their parents’ home for major holidays. we usually have more people at our worship gatherings that build up to the CHRISTmas and easter than we do for the actual holidays. the thing i love is that we care more about making sure we live out the meaning and purpose of CHRISTmas and easter than we do about having a lot of people at those days’ worship gatherings. church attendance isn’t what matters to us.
my hope and prayer for you is that you live out easter in your life. the truth behind resurrection day should effect how we live all our days. if you need a church to help you remember this i can gladly recommend tapestry. 🙂
